Badass WOC of the Week: Shonda Rhimes

Image credit: British Airways

“I want [my daughter] to grow up feeling like there are no things she can’t do simply because she’s a woman of color. If I can do that, I’ve succeeded as a mother.”

In March 2005, a medical drama with an ensemble cast premiered as a midseason replacement on the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Grey's Anatomy - the title a clear play on the renowned human anatomy text book Gray's Anatomy - boasted a cast of ridiculously attractive people playing surgeons, snappy and trendy dialogue, and montages set to music with angsty piano-playing. 

By the end of its ten-episode run, Grey's became a household name, and at the centre of it all was its showrunner, Shonda Rhimes.

Shonda Rhimes was born and raised in Chicago. She's the youngest daughter of a university administrator and a college professor. After graduating from Dartmouth College (also the alma mater of her titular character, Meredith Grey), she did a stint working in advertising in San Francisco, before getting accepted into the University of Southern California Film School. Rhimes received the Gary Rosenberg Fellowship Writing Award, and graduated at the top of her class.

Rhimes's first break on a major Hollywood project was writing the screenplay for the teen road trip film Crossroads starring Britney Spears. This was followed by adapting Meg Cabot's work for the second installation of The Princess Diaries series. Soon, she was drawn to the small screen, and today, she is one of the most prolific television writers in the 21st century.

Rhimes (centre) with a number of actors from her three shows

Image credit: The Picture Group

Grey's Anatomy, now on its 10th season, was followed by its spin-off, Private Practice, another drama about a group of doctors at a fertility clinic in California. In 2012, Rhimes began to conclude Private Practice to introduce Scandal, a fast-paced political drama set in Washington DC. Scandal, fronted by Kerry Washington, is the first network drama that features top billing for an African-American female character, written and produced by an African-American female showrunner.

Between Grey's and Scandal, which air consecutively on Thursday nights, ABC earns a whopping $13 million every week. Rhimes and her writers' hold on an audience is evident, as 90% of Grey's viewers keep their TVs on to watch Scandal straight afterwards. 

Because of this, Scandal is also a social media phenomenon, with millions of people - including Rhimes and the regular cast - engaging on Twitter while an episode airs every week.

Shonda Rhimes with one of her NAACP Image Awards, won in 2011 for Private Practice

Image credit: UPI

Her television work is highly-acclaimed, with multiple Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe for Grey's Anatomy. She has also won a Women in Film Lucy Award and four NAACP Image Awards, two apiece for Grey's and Private Practice.

Shonda Rhimes' craft doesn't just extend to writing compelling - if not, outrageous - stories. One of the much-admired hallmarks of her shows is her commitment to creating diverse worlds. Grey's Anatomy's first season ensemble cast - the actors were selected through a colour-blind casting process - featured more people of colour than what was normally seen on primetime television in 2005.

Grey's Anatomy's first season regular characters

Image credit: ABC

Eight years onward, Grey's still features one of the most diverse casts on television - and it has extended to more than just race. In 2011, it aired the first female same-gender wedding on primetime network television, and that couple holds the title of having the longest running romance on prime time, through thick and thin.

Rhimes pulled off another diverse world in Scandal. Not only is Kerry Washington the star of the show, but there is another African-American regular, a Latino regular and an established, married gay couple.

The cast of Scandal

Image credit: ABC

In a profile of her published by The New York Times (which is, by the way, an excellent read on its own), Rhimes insists that her intentionally diverse worlds are not, in any way, a political statement, but a personal one (this scene from Scandal hints at art imitating life):

While race on Rhimes’s shows is omnipresent, it is not often discussed explicitly. This has led to a second-order critique of her shows: that they are colorblind, diverse in a superficial way, with the characters’ races rarely informing their choices or conversations. Rhimes, obviously, disagrees. “When people who aren’t of color create a show and they have one character of color on their show, that character spends all their time talking about the world as ‘I’m a black man blah, blah, blah,’ ” she says. “That’s not how the world works. I’m a black woman every day, and I’m not confused about that. I’m not worried about that. I don’t need to have a discussion with you about how I feel as a black woman, because I don’t feel disempowered as a black woman.”

That said, Rhimes's diverse worlds - not to mention her tendency to write complex and capable female characters - have made her one of the most powerful names in Hollywood today.

Shonda Rhimes's is so influential that she has inspired more black writers to break into the television industry. Not only has she put more people of colour on television, but her existence alone is enough to inspire young people of colour to follow in her footsteps - which is a great thing for the future of primetime television.

Image credit: Glamour Magazine

Further Reading

Inspiration: Shonda Rhimes and the Depiction of a Diverse World

The Anatomy of Grey's Anatomy

Grey Matter: From the Writers of Grey's Anatomy

Scandal's racially charged motto: "You have to be twice as good as them"